For many years, ITS has maintained a small, ragtag collection of equipment affectionately known as the ITS Loaner Pool. The Loaner Pool was devised so that faculty and staff would have short-term access to a laptop, projector, or video camera. Demand for the service grew and it soon became a must-have service for the College.
This summer, ITS has replaced the equipment in the pool with all-new, lighter laptops and laptop bags, audio equipment and more modern cameras and projectors. Access to the ITS Loaner Pool was also expanded to include Pomona students.

The procedure for requesting equipment from the Pool has changed slightly. All requests need to be reserved at least 24 hours in advance if possible by submitting a request to ServiceDesk@pomona.edu. Borrowers will need to submit what equipment they wish to borrow and the dates that they will need the equipment. Loans are restricted to 1 week, but consideration may be taken in longer loans. Availability of equipment is not guaranteed, depending on demand. We expect demand to be high, so make sure that you make equipment requests ahead of time, but no more than 2 weeks in advance.

Borrowers will now need to fill out a form stating their understanding of the policy and assumption of financial responsibility (either billing a department or student account for loss or damage) and to inspect the equipment to ensure everything is working upon checkout and check in.

The procedure for longer term loans remains the same – send an e-mail to ServiceDesk@pomona.edu we will try to accommodate reasonable requests or we may be able or point you in the right direction. Students seeking longer term computer loans may wish to contact the Dean of Students Office for options.

Also, keep in mind that many spaces on campus are equipped with computers and projectors.

For a more in-depth look at the ITS Loaner Pool policy, please review:

ITS is very pleased to welcome Steven (Cole) Maddox to our team. He steps into the role of Deputy Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Enterprise Services. In this role, he will oversee Information Services and AISO, which provide support for both Pomona and consortial administrative systems, and our Infrastructure and System Services team, which manages our servers, security, authentication and cloud systems.

Cole comes to us from The Westminster Schools, a private, highly-regarded K-12 located in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was Chief Technology Officer. Before his time at The Westminster Schools, he was Chief Information Officer for Oglethorpe University, a private liberal arts college, also located in Atlanta, Georgia.

A native of Georgia, Cole recently drove the epic journey of 2,145 miles from Atlanta to join us here in Claremont. Cole is married with three children who hope to join him here in December. His hobbies are Scouting with his children, hiking and camping. He is a certified Emergency Medical Responder and has a secret passion for Pokémon Go.

We want to let you know how ITS will be working to transition you to your new “graduated student” status. First of all, your MyMail e-mail account will be yours to keep indefinitely, with a few provisions. Microsoft will keep the account active as long as you login to the MyMail website at least once every 6 months; without that regular check-in, Microsoft will suspend the account and potentially clear out any old messages.
Speaking of e-mail, the one address that will remain with you is the userid@mymail.pomona.edu format, so that is the address you’ll want to be sure to use going forward for all correspondence. We will keep your first.last@pomona.edu alias through December of this year to help you make the transition, but be sure and update any systems that use your Pomona address to the MyMail address format.

While your network account will remain active for ongoing portal access, your network space on the Fargo server will be inaccessible after June 30th, so be sure and copy any important files you need to your own computer’s drive, external hard drive, flash drive, or personal cloud storage.
If you wish to donate any remaining print quota balance to another student, you can go to http://print.pomona.edu and login using campus\userid and click “Transfers” on the left. Just enter the person’s user ID in the “transfer to user” box; you can determine their ID based on their Pomona MyMail e-mail address.

Please click below to access the April 2016 version of the ITSMonthly. This month we feature the Physics Department and its use of video in teaching and learning, the new Course Scheduler and ITS employee, Steve Moss. We’ve also added a tip page for those craving a little techno topic.

Alex La, the Interim Head Coach for the Pomona-Pitzer Men’s Water Polo and Women’s Water Polo programs in 2015-16, submitted a Hahn grant for the acquisition of equipment that would enable the coaches to tag segments of game films to organize the films for teaching and coaching the
tactics and the fundamentals of the sport to student athletes.

In a recent conversation with Alex and Tamara Perea, the assistant coach of the Pomona-Pitzer Women’s Water Polo program , it was clear that the ability to be able to use this software for teaching and coaching so quickly was “a game changer”. SportsCode Gamebreak can separate all aspects of a game or a practice into clips that can be organized by multiple attributes or “tags” such as offensive, defensive or even specific clips of an individual player. This can occur during a game or it can be brought back into the classroom for review and teaching.

Prior to this, the only alternative was for the student athletes to watch the entire video rather than those segments that are relevant to improving their game. Alex said that the students after watching the video repeatedly would “lose their attention, their focus”, thereby
defeating the purpose of it.

Tamara and Alex both noted that the Women’s team is a very young team (with 9 freshmen on it) and having the ability to focus on the tactics, “learning the game” was key to their improvement. After practices, the video can be taken right into the classroom for teaching and coaching the athletes.
Alex said last year he even posted videos on Sakai for students to review independently. Classroom sessions are now about 90% video and 10% whiteboard, said Alex.

Another way of using the software is as positive reinforcement. La put together a “Pump Up Video” last year showing all the goals the athletes had scored in the season. A student (Adam) dropping by the conversation said that these video clips personalize the game for students and allow them to “go in depth on what you’re doing right and wrong.”

Happy Leap Day! Please click below to access the March 2016 version of the ITSMonthly. This month we change the format and the focus of the ITS Monthly in order to feature stories of technology work on campus and your colleagues and co-workers.

(Note: The following article is the first of many we will write with the goal of introducing you to members of Information Technology Services and work that is being done with members of our community.)

Todd Shimoda, Academic Applications Manager

Todd Shimoda, Academic Applications Manager, is a member of the Instructional and Research Services group of Pomona College Information Technology Services. In his role, he works with faculty of various departments to assist them in building technology into research projects. Instructional and Research Services in Pomona College ITS provides resources and services to promote the use of technology in both the teaching and learning and the research environment.